I handle digital advertising for a large US-based weight loss company. Most of my time is focused on optimizing our Paid Search campaigns - I spend over $1M a month on search ads on Google and Bing.
As you can imagine this is already quite a competitive industry with multiple well-funded advertisers bidding on the same keywords. But I've spotted a new entrant into the battle for my own branded terms (IE bidding on the name of my company) - a "Our Men Only Date BBWs" Dating Site (screenshot attached).
So basically, this BBW Site is trying to "poach" women who are looking into weight loss solutions at my company, and tell them that they don't need to lose any weight to get dick. In fact their men "ONLY" date BBWs. They feel so confident in their sales proposition they are likely paying north of $1 per click (my branded terms are already expensive, due to competition).
The C-levels here are always talking about MyFitnessPal and Nike Fuel Bands as the current "wave" our company needs to react to as our sales have plateaued this year and there is a lot of finger pointing as to why this is happening. But personally I think our biggest competitive threat is fat acceptance. What can we do about this against this unstoppable onslaught? Become a clandestine sponsor of the next Fat Shaming Week?
This is a humorous post, but seriously, I do fear for the future of this industry as fat acceptance continues its rise. Our sales were flat in 2013 but the industry as a whole has taken a beating. It's a much tougher task to get overweight women to fork over $250+ a month for meal replacements if they think they are "beautiful just the way they are" and "real men love BBWs".
As you can imagine this is already quite a competitive industry with multiple well-funded advertisers bidding on the same keywords. But I've spotted a new entrant into the battle for my own branded terms (IE bidding on the name of my company) - a "Our Men Only Date BBWs" Dating Site (screenshot attached).
So basically, this BBW Site is trying to "poach" women who are looking into weight loss solutions at my company, and tell them that they don't need to lose any weight to get dick. In fact their men "ONLY" date BBWs. They feel so confident in their sales proposition they are likely paying north of $1 per click (my branded terms are already expensive, due to competition).
The C-levels here are always talking about MyFitnessPal and Nike Fuel Bands as the current "wave" our company needs to react to as our sales have plateaued this year and there is a lot of finger pointing as to why this is happening. But personally I think our biggest competitive threat is fat acceptance. What can we do about this against this unstoppable onslaught? Become a clandestine sponsor of the next Fat Shaming Week?
This is a humorous post, but seriously, I do fear for the future of this industry as fat acceptance continues its rise. Our sales were flat in 2013 but the industry as a whole has taken a beating. It's a much tougher task to get overweight women to fork over $250+ a month for meal replacements if they think they are "beautiful just the way they are" and "real men love BBWs".